The state-owned
Turkish Petroleum Corporation announced last month that it had signed a
contract with the North Iraqi state oil company to build 20 drilling sites. The
oil exploration will be done in the northeastern swath of Iraq where the
Kurdistan Democratic Party is based.

Since the end of
its war against Iraq in 1991, Washington has enforced a self-declared
"no-fly" zone over the area where the oil sites will be built, with
regular patrols and strikes by warplanes.

The move by the
Turkish government marks another step in its collaboration with Kurdish forces
in northern Iraq. "So long as Baghdad does not have full control over the
totality of Iraq, Turkey will make sure nothing goes on in north Iraq that it
does not like," said Soli Ozel, an international relations professor at
Bilgi University in Istanbul.

Ankara waged a
brutal 15-year war against Kurdish forces fighting for independence in
southeast Turkey, which has left more than 30,000 people dead. The Turkish
regime has relied on two Kurdish factions in northern Iraq for assistance in
repressing Kurdish guerrillas led by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in
western Turkey. Although a cease-fire was declared in 1999, the Turkish
military periodically launches attacks on Kurds in northern Iraq under the
pretext that guerrillas remain based there. In early January, 800 Turkish
troops entered northern Iraq supposedly to drive out remaining Kurdish
independence fighters.

The new oil
drilling pact was approved by the Iraqi state oil company and comes as the
Turkish ruling class has sent conflicting signals to Washington over a new
military assault on Iraq.

In mid-December the
New York Times reported the Turkish government would give the go-ahead for Washington
to use Turkish military bases if the Bush "administration were committed
to toppling" Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The article took note of the
fact that then defense minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu stated a month earlier
that Ankara had "several times said that we don't wish an operation in
Iraq, but new conditions would bring new evaluations to our agenda."

After getting wind
in its sails from the success in its war in Afghanistan and an expanding
military presence in the region, some officials in the Bush administration and
other bourgeois pundits have been pressing for a renewed drive to oust the
regime of Saddam Hussein. An article in the December 17 New York Times noted
that the "current military success" of Washington's war against
Afghanistan, and the demonstration of a "new model of warfare there,"
have "created a new opportunity to act in Iraq."

In an opinion piece
headlined "Next Stop, Iraq," published in the November 15 Wall Street
Journal , former British foreign secretary David Owen called for the U.S.
government to "establish a military base with an airfield in Northern
Iraq" to bolster efforts to "pursue a counter-terrorist
strategy."

But the Turkish
rulers remain skittish about a massive U.S. military assault against Iraq,
fearing a repeat of the Kurdish revolt that erupted following Washington's
1990–91 assault on the Iraqi people. A war on Iraq would provoke "much
greater adversity" for Turkey, asserted Chief of General Staff Huseyin
Kivrikoglu, according to a December 26 Reuters dispatch. "An independent
Kurdish state would be on the agenda," he added.

Some 20 million to
30 million Kurds are divided among southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria,
northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. In the aftermath of
the Iraq war, the Kurdish people took advantage of the weakening of the Saddam
Hussein regime to press forward their struggle, holding many villages and
towns, before Baghdad used helicopter gunships and heavy armor to crush the
rebellion.

Recently, a
delegation of nine U.S. senators embarked on a week-long tour of several
countries in Central Asia that included a meeting to bolster Turkish support.
"We are appreciative...of the sensitivity regarding Kurds, that's why any
action taken by the United States vis-a-vis Saddam Hussein would be after a
period of consultation and hopefully cooperation particularly with the Turkish
government," said Sen. John McCain.

Despite plans
floated in the U.S. big-business media for launching a war against Iraq, such
military action has apparently been put on the back burner for now. In an
interview with the New York Times, Deputy Defense Minister Paul Wolfowitz, one
of the staunchest advocates for attacking Iraq, "suggested that the
Pentagon could opt to put off the bigger and politically more difficult targets
in the war on terrorism like Iraq."

Meanwhile, the
Turkish parliament approved a measure extending the use of a Turkish air base
by U.S. and British warplanes to enforce no-fly zones over northern Iraq for
another six months starting from December 31.